


Salamandra

by ThirstyForRed



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Fight Club References, Gen, Inspired by Fight Club, there's some Jacques/Roderick but very one-sided
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 11:54:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28759887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThirstyForRed/pseuds/ThirstyForRed
Summary: "You may not like what I want to show you," says Jacques and smiles with that bright face of his. It's weird. Human faces shouldn't be this bright. It's like looking in the sun and sometimes I'm afraid that if I keep looking at him like that it will burn out my retinas. For eternity cursing me with seeing spirals everywhere."Or maybe it will be exactly up to your liking."
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I swear I was thinking about different pets for my ocs and also about Alvin's salamander, and then I started wondering if maybe Roderick would be able to hold them without getting burned - and then I remembered my favorite scene in the Fight Club and here we are :]  
> I based this mostly on my polish translation of the book, because that the only thing I hand on hand at the moment - so stylistically it may be way off from the original. The scene is a bit different in the movie, but it's all details, so if you have never read the book no worries.

You're in the sewers, deep, deep underneath the city. And it stinks.

But Jacques says nothing about the stench, only makes a face, so I also keep quiet. Besides, we're here because earlier he promised to show me something. Something worth going so deep.

And we're in the Salamandra's hideout, in the secret laboratories, I shouldn't know about. But I know. I actually know way too much, that's what I think sometimes.

"You may not like what I want to show you," says Jacques and smiles with that bright face of his. It's weird. Human faces shouldn't be this bright. It's like looking in the sun and sometimes I'm afraid that if I keep looking at him like that it will burn out my retinas. For eternity cursing me with seeing spirals everywhere.

"Or maybe it will be exactly up to your liking."

We won't know until I see it, right?

Jacques laughs lightly and grabs me by the shoulder and we take a shape turn. It's a real maze. Without him, I don't think I would find my way in. I wouldn't get out.

I trust you, I say out loud.

Jacques says that's good, and then we're in the theater. It's not a theater, not the real one. We're still in stinky sewers underneath Vizima. But it's a big room, like the surgery rooms at universities. In Oxenfurt or in Nilfgaard. Perfect for medicine students, so they can observe what bodies look like when skinned. Or cut wide open. Make notes on intestines coiling like eels.

"Not so long ago," says Jacques "examining the human body like that was forbidden. Mages could do this, but they still had to hide their laboratories. Sneak around with their freshly stolen bodies."

We stand next to one of the tables, the one in the center, and I reach toward the stained sheet.

I ask if I can.

Jacques nods.

I pull the filthy material and want to vomit.

Thankfully I don't, and only hear Jacques as if he's in an entirely different dimension. Isn't she a beauty?

She isn't. Not really. Not at all. Maybe before - maybe before they cut her up and poured acid on her.

At least that's what she looks like. All burned tissue and mangled bones. Jacques puts a hand on her bald head and pets gently. Her finger, hands clasped in shackles, twitch lightly.

She's still alive.

"But not for long," says Jacques. "She's a failed experiment. If she doesn't die by herself, we'll have to help her with it."

What's her name?

"Is it relevant?" Jacques cocks his head to the side. Like a confused dog. Why would I even ask that?

"I don't think she had one to begin with."

She moans as if she can still understand us. As if there's anyone left there, inside, behind the fog of pain and fear.

"Roderick," he says my name. "That's only a part of what I wanted to show you."

And he simply puts the sheet back over her.

In the North, they say that you've got to crack a few eggs to make an omelet. Jacques of course already knows that. He's a northerner.

I ask what then Jacques wanted me to see.

"You heard about Alzur, haven't you?"

I nod. Yes, I heard about him. Renegade mage. The maker of the witchers.

"Arrogant prick," Jacques spits, but walks me to the desk closer to the walls. Pushes me towards the only chair.

I sit and he keeps talking.

"He wanted to create something that will change the world. Something that will save humanity. But you see, Alzur was incredibly short-sighted - he couldn't comprehend the long-term effects of his actions. Or that the world might change despite him. First witchers killed 3/4 of the monster population on the continent in less than a century since they were made. And then, a century later, 3/4 of witchers were killed because people realized they no longer needed them. Another hundred years and look where we are... We need something to secure our future again."

Aen Ithlinnespeath.

"Humanity is fragile. You are fragile."

Jacques takes my right hand and squeezes it between his.

"I need you to promise me something."

I will do anything.

"I want you to survive. No matter what I need you to trust me and do what I ask. That's the only way I can make sure you stay safe. Do you promise that you will survive?"

I promise.

"If you go against me you will die. Horribly. Likely painfully."

I promise.

"Do you promise?"

I promise.

"Remember," says Jacques "that you promised three times."

He starts pulling drawers in the desk, clearly looking for something, still holding my hand in his.

"Alzur ran his experiments in the theater like this one. Somewhere hidden because while people were scared of night and darkness, and monsters, they apparently weren't scared enough. They hated his creations, but couldn't make him stop making mutants."

Mutants, I say and start breathing through my open mouth.

"Witchers are mutants, but you can do so much more with a body if you only know how to. Alzur claimed that adults were a bad starting point for mutations. That females weren't strong enough. But he was lazy. Not bright enough."

Jacques finally finds a jar with small holes on the lid. There're some leaves inside, a small branch and two salamanders. No. It's one, but two-headed. A mutant.

It's skin glimmers in the darkness like the night sky. 

"But with an open mind and clear direction, we can make so much more. It's not just about making us stronger, healthier, faster. It's about putting that fire inside us."

Fire, I repeat, and Jacques smiles at me.

He licks his lips, raises my hand, and plants a wet kiss right on the inside of the palm. My skin is now tingling, and wet, marked with Jacques' lips.

"Have you heard about fire salamanders?" Jacques says, but doesn't wait for my answer. "Amphibians that can breathe fire like dragons and will sleep in the bonfire. Their eggs can stay unhatched for centuries and will be awakened only if put directly in the fire."

"They aren't real."

He reaches with a free hand to the jar, opens it, and pulls out the salamander right by the end of its forked tail.

"Or they weren't - until now."

Jacques holds it right above my open palm, the one still bearing his wet kiss. The small animal fidgets, clearly wanting to get down.

"We are the frontier of changes, Roderick," says Jacques. "And it's going to hurt. More than anything you have ever experienced."

The salamander stretches its tiny limbs like it really could touch me. It's panicking.

"You will be scarred," says Jacques.

"Fire salamanders will survive the White Frost just by waiting it over and getting reborn in the fire," explains Jacques. "We will fight the eternal winter with the eternal fire. Do you still remember your promise, Roderick?"

And Jacques places the salamander on my palm.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know when you think something like oh I'm gonna write only like 5 sentences and pick it up another day, and then you kinda blackout and after two hours realize you actually finished the thing? yeah
> 
> i mean it has this weird quality of 'that's not what i expected but ok' because while the whole thing started as a reference to the Fight Club, this part really splits up, it has more of a vibe of my other fav book, Lunapark by Tomislav Zajec. idk the two of them live in my head next to each other, so it's not that weird i keep referencing them together but also, that really obscure bs...
> 
> anyway, a hot mess for the audience of one part 2

You're in the sewers, deep, deep underneath the city. And you wish it was easier to simply die.

But it hurts and Jacques still holds me. With his right hand on my jaw, and left keeping still whatever is left of my own limb. It feels like it might not be that much.

And he repeats my name, quietly. Maybe so his half-dead creations won't overhear us.

"Focus on it. It's the most important moment in your life," he says.

I remember. I remember the summer when the sun blasting the Lower Alba was particularly unforgiving. Crops dying, people and animals fainting because of the heat. I remember lying on the floors, cool mosaic tiles in my father's summer residence.

"When I was a boy, just learning about my talents, I would go and catch frogs and salamanders by the streams. My mother would watch me and praise every creature I brought before her." Jacques sounds like he's somewhere far away.

I close my eyes, but he pulls one open by sticking his thumb - not painfully, comparatively, but distractingly - right under my eye socket.

I see him smiling. Brightly, blindingly, madly.

"Don't run away. Focus. Stay here. Stay with me."

Back in Nilfgaard, I could spend all summer lying on the floor, or soft pillows, drinking lemon liquor and laughing with friends. If I only wanted. I could be ignoring everything.

"With a bucket full of frogs we would return home and she would help me. She wasn't a great herbalist or alchemist, but she learned a thing or two... We would make frogs sleep and then open them. And learn. Here are the lungs, there is the liver... She would point out the most important organs, explain what they do, and then they would die. Tiny amphibian hearts gradually slowing their rhythm."

I think that if it really was my end, at the very least I'm not alone, not entirely. Jacques wipes away my tears and I can't turn away from him.

"Look at your hand. Don't turn away."

I can't.

"They're such simple creatures. All you need to give them is something to eat and a place to shit... Almost like a human."

He laughs, just like children do when they play.

Jacques' hand leaves my face and I watch him reaching to that fucking salamander, standing frozen in panic in the middle of my palm. Oozing toxins that make my skin boil. But he lets it climb his fingers and smiles fondly at the tiny monster.

Jacques raises his hand to his face and kisses the mutant. Tiny kiss on each one of its heads. And then he puts it back into the jar it came from.

Was it a test?

He studies me for a second as if he can't understand any of it. He shoves the twisted jar to my chest and, even though I don't want to, I instinctively hold onto it.

"We live all our life only for one day, for that single moment. When it finally arrives, how are we supposed to recognize it?" That's what Jacques says. He squeezes my wrist, once, twice, and lets go of it.

It still hurts, and it's going to scar, and the look and smell of melted skin is nauseating. But in my mind, it still holds the shape of his kiss.

I wonder why it didn't hurt him.

"Magic. It's always just magic," he says from the other side of the theater. "Things we create with magic and things we destroy with magic, are always the same."

"With magic, I could heal you and make you forget."

It's easy to forget pain, even if the scars linger.

I think about all the times I bled: as a child, young knight, and last night in Adda's bed. About all the tiny marks on my body, origins of I only vaguely remember. But they weren't as important - they weren't left by him.

But that doesn't seem to please Jacques. He looks troubled. He walks back to my chair and knees before me.

"Maybe you're right." He tilts his head to the side and reaches for my hand.

Don't.

I try to move out of his reach, the chair creaking on floors as it backs up. But Jacques only chuckles and grabs my sweaty hair with the other hand. He tugs on them.

"Roderick," he murmurs and smiles with all the sweetness that gets right under my skin. "I'm not going to hurt you. Not anymore."

I wish it was just a dream. Or that I actually died and this is the hell.

Jacques laughs and sneaks his warm fingers around my left wrist. Slotted so perfectly as if they were meant to be like that.

"I'm afraid I mistook you for someone else. Something from my dreams..."

It happens. I'm sorry.

"But think about this," he turns my palm around and raises it to his lips. Jacques's kisses hurt so much. "We will never be closer to each other than we were tonight."

He returns my hand and I look at it once again. It hurts. But there's no mark left. It hurts more than it really should.


End file.
